Listen: The Absurdity of Pay Parity Foe Bob Linn Advising Mayor Mamdani
Bob Linn, close adviser to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has a long history of opposing pay parity for FDNY EMS first-responders going back decades.
By Joe Maniscalco
Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office on Jan. 1 declaring a “new era” in New York City. But for FDNY EMS first-responders in crisis it seems a lot like the same old song and dance.
Maybe that’s because underneath all the lofty rhetoric Mayor Mamdani has chosen as a close adviser a man whose opposition to FDNY EMS pay parity literally goes back more than 40 years.
Robert W. Linn was first elevated to head the city’s Office of Labor Relations during the Koch administration. You read that right—Linn has been involved with New York City labor negotiations in one form or another since before the turn of the last century.
Mayor Mamdani, nevertheless, tapped Linn to be part of his transition team and continues to retain him as a special consultant to City Hall—all the while knowing that city EMTs and paramedics have been working without a contract since 2022.
Linn dismissed pay parity as a factor in the city’s dangerously increasing response times, refusing to discuss issue and calling the idea “patently absurd”—all the way back in 1987.
“EMS response time is up, you are correct,” Linn wrote then-Local 2507 President Richard McAllen. “But your allegation that response time is up and people are dying simply because EMS workers are not paid the same as Police and Fire is patently absurd. Response time is basically up because the number of EMS calls increased and because the EMS fleet is in need of repair and expansion.”
Fast forward to today and emergency response times in New York City are now approaching 11 minutes, 30 seconds, FDNY EMS first-responders are on the brink of collapse still suffering from inadequate pay and profound retention issues—and Bob Linn is once again whispering in the mayor’s ear.
Now, that sounds “patently absurd,” doesn’t it?
“They can’t increase staffing because no one wants this job because it pays so poorly,” Marianne Pizzitola, former FDNY EMS first-responder and president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, said on the Aug. 24 episode of Labor and Healthcare Confidential.
Prospective recruits as well as active EMS workers, Pizzitola also pointed out on Monday’s show, have spent the last five years watching the City of New York “screw over” municipals retirees by attempting to diminish their healthcare and pass on additional cost to them in violation of the law.
“Who would want to work for an employer like that,” Pizzitola said. “It’s not a new era—it’s just a new mayor because the policy is the same.”
Listen to the entire discussion about FDNY EMS pay parity below beginning at the 35-minute mark.